Taxis Vis

📊 Data Analysis Backend (Django + Pandas)

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Warning

🚨 Important Notice: This current repository and the Taxis-Vis-Frontend are put on hold. The goal was to see what is possible to do with today tools on the Javascript end side coupled with Python backend for reproducing Taxis-VIS. Now it touches enough yet is not deleted because could be (re-)used. Cheers! @Simon.

🚀 Overview

The Data Analysis Backend is a Django + Pandas service that performs analytics on taxi trip data.
Once the Taxis Vis Frontend filters taxi trips, it sends a subset of trips here for statistical and **graphical ** analysis,
including histograms, box plots, scatter plots, and time-series visualizations, to name a few.

Note

The Geospatial backend is no longer needed since DuckDB-WASM handles spatial queries directly in the frontend.
This backend is strictly for data analysis & visualization—not spatial filtering.

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📦 Installation & Setup

🔧 Prerequisites

• Python (>=3.8)
• Django (installed via uv or pip)
• (Recommended) UV for seamless virtual environment management
• Pandas (for handling data operations)

🛠️ Steps to Set Up

1️⃣ Clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/VIDA-NYU/Taxis-Vis-Data-Backend.git
cd Taxis-Vis-Data-Backend

2️⃣ Install dependencies using UV:

uv lock
uv sync

3️⃣ Run the Django server:

# With UV (recommended)
uv run python manage.py runserver

# Or manually if using pip/venv (though make sure to be in the correct environment)
python manage.py runserver

💡 By default, the backend runs on http://127.0.0.1:8000.

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📊 How It Works: Data Flow

1️⃣ User applies filters in the Frontend (Taxis Vis UI).
2️⃣ Frontend sends a filtered subset of trips (CSV) to this Django backend.
3️⃣ Django processes the CSV using Pandas and generates Plotly-compatible JSON for visualization.
4️⃣ Frontend receives the JSON and renders the requested charts dynamically.

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📖 Further Reading & Resources

• Frontend (React) README → The user-facing interface that triggers these analysis requests.
• Original Taxis Vis Paper (IEEE) → Research behind the system.

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Happy Analysing!
The Taxis Vis Team 🚀